When looking to hire an influencer, you are hiring a contractor who runs a small business to produce a project for you. In most cases, what influencers provide are photos, videos, maybe recipes or project instructions, and reviews of products.

Often when I explain to friends how I make money blogging, they are in disbelief of what I am paid for “only 1 recipe and some photos.”

The truth is, there is a lot of work and plenty of associated costs that go into the service an influencer provides.

Cost of Supplies

When influencers take on a project, they need to purchase items. For a DIY blogger, it could be art supplies. For a food blogger, it’s recipe ingredients. It’s important to keep in mind that although yes, a food blogger will be eating the food, it is still a project expense. Oftentimes food bloggers will use speciality ingredients, buy extra garnishes or items to use as props they wouldn’t normally use, and sometime waste ingredients when a recipe fails.

In addition, bloggers stage photos using dishes, linens, and cooking tools. Sometimes influencers will have these items already from past projects, but often they will need to buy at least 1 new prop to create the mood or scene they are going for.

Cost of Equipment

In addition to the items in the photos, influencers need a lot of technical equipment to make magic happen!

Influencers use professional cameras, lenses, and photography equipment, like tripods, studio lights and reflectors.

A computer and often a smart phone is a part of an influencer’s business expenses. And although most influencers work out of their homes, they often have to allocate special spaces or buy additional furniture to set up a work station. Many influencers purchase costly photography backgrounds to achieve the most polished results.

Social media is free, but there are costs associated with running a blog, including hosting, technical support, graphic design, and sometimes advertising.

Most influencers who begin working on campaigns have reached a level where they are also using premium software to create the most professional results they can. This includes photography software, video editing software, and oftentimes paid subscriptions to online learning centers to continue improving their craft.

Bloggers and online influencers are incredible multi taskers. In a traditional media company, there are individuals who specialize in photography, videography, graphic design, and social media. These specialists also have support from an IT department. With a small to mid-size blog, the blogger herself has learned to juggle all these tasks, and has done so with enough success to warrant the attention she receives. Occasionally, an influencer will also pay outside contractors to assist with issues as they arise.

Size of Audience

An influencer’s audience includes website traffic, as well as followers on a range of social medias.

The size of an influencer’s audience is often the first factor considered, but isn’t the end-all most think it is.

An influencer’s reach is important. Typically, the longer and harder an influencer has worked providing free information, the larger the reach will be.

More important than a total followers count is an engagement rate. An influencer who has a large following but a low engagement rate typically won’t be as successful in promoting a product as an influencer with lower numbers, but higher engagement.

Engaging with social media followers, in addition to producing content, is very time consuming, so a high engagement rate is something that influencers have to work very hard at to be successful.

An Introduction to a Niche Market

Typically, the more niche an influencer’s audience is, the higher fee they will command for products that fit directly into that niche. This is because they specialize in providing information that is directly relevant to your market.

For example, a blogger who only posts blender recipes, tips, and tricks, will be paid more by a company who sells blenders than say, a general recipe blogger. This is because that audience is primed and ready to purchase blenders, and is following the influencer because of an interest in blender recipes.

Tracking the success of an influencer campaign is not a straightforward process, and it’s certainly not an exact science.

The truth is, some of the benefits are measurable (and impressive!), but the unmeasurable benefits extend much further.

One study has shown influencer marketing to have an 11x higher ROI to traditional forms of marketing. We have systems to track ROI, but know the data we are able to collect only scratches the surface.

Immeasurable Impact

First off, the costs associated with influencer marketing are relatively low compared to more traditional forms of media advertisements. There is no need to pay designers or set fees, or actors and models. All of the creative fees are wrapped into the influencer’s fee.

Second, the company receives a lot more than just advertisements that run for a predetermined set of time. Influencer content stays around for a long time, and that content is pulled up and amplified every year, especially if it’s tied to a holiday, season, or yearly event (think Christmas or back to school content).

Part of our contracts with influencers includes a right for the brand to reuse photos and videos produced for the campaign on their own website. This professionally produced content is all wrapped into the influencer’s fees, and is a great way to build a library of beautiful content to share with the brand’s own following.

Most importantly, we trust those we follow online. A recent study found that 86% of women turn to social media for recommendations, advice, and opinions prior to making a purchase. Recommendations made by people we trust are way more valuable than those made by the brands themselves. It’s natural we are skeptical of the brand’s own motivation for promoting it’s own product. We trust influencers have chosen to work with brands who develop products they really love, knowing we are likely to love them as well.

Measurable Metrics

Cost Per Impression

We can track how many impressions the content receives during the campaign duration. With this information, a cost per impression rate is produced. This rate is compared to studies of traditional print and visual advertisements.

It’s important to keep in mind that with a traditional media ad, those “impressions” would end with the close of the campaign. Influencers are very likely to pull up the content they created and share with followers again and again in years to come, so the “cost per impression” during the campaign is really just the tip of the iceberg.

ROI for Online Sales

More Media, Inc. uses trackable links that show us detailed information about sales during a campaign. With the use of the links, we can tell in real time how much engagement an influencer’s post has. This allows us not only to measure the success of a campaign, but also allows us to make tweaks mid-campaign if we find something isn’t having the expected impact.

These links also give us a specific ROI for online sales. If your product is sold from your website or other online market, we can track how many sales are a result of our campaign.

Social Media Followers

It’s also important to track the effect our influencers’ recommendations have on your social media
numbers. Throughout campaigns, we record starting numbers, and can show how each campaign post impact’s your brand’s social media following. It’s important to note the benefits from growing your following are long term, and immeasurably valuable.

#Hashtag Success

Who else is talking about your product? Our influencers use and encourage followers to use campaign hashtags, so we can find out what people are saying about our clients’ products. These hashtags also open up the campaigns to participation from enthusiasts who follow the influencers.

As a part of our metrics tracking, we follow campaign hashtags, and use conversations about the product as a part of our ROI Report.